During April 2017, the Company expanded its brand to include lemonade. Lemonade is offered in nine flavors including traditional, lime, pink lemonade, kiwi & strawberry, cherry, peach, watermelon, wild berries and strawberry and is offered at retail in 18oz. bottles.

The Company also distributes an aloe vera derived juice beverage (“ALO Juice”) in 500ml and 1.5 liter bottles. ALO Juice is offered in six flavors including original, pomegranate, mango, raspberry, pineapple and coconut. See below regarding the ALO Juice business. In addition, in order to service certain vending contracts, the Company sells snacks and other beverage products on a limited basis.

The Company sells its products to regional retail chains and to a mix of independent mid-to-large range distributors who in turn sell to retail outlets, such as big chain supermarkets, mass merchants, convenience stores, restaurants and hotels, principally in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania markets, with expanding distribution in Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and parts of the Midwest. As of September 30, 2017, the Company’s products are available in 20 states and in the Caribbean, Canada and Latin America.

Boring, right? I mean, “wild berries” sounds pretty cool when it comes to ice tea flavors, but generally speaking, who the hell wants to run an iced tea company when everyone else is getting into the crypto business?

Not management, apparently.

Because Long Island Iced Tea is now “Long Blockchain” (and you can take that figuratively and literally here). This is from their new website:

About Long Blockchain

Long Blockchain Corp. (Nasdaq: LTEA) is focused on developing and investing in globally scalable blockchain technology solutions. It is dedicated to becoming a significant blockchain business that creates long term value for its shareholders and the wider community by investing in and developing businesses that are “on-chain”. Blockchain technology is fundamentally changing the way people and businesses transact, and the Company will strive to be at the forefront of this dynamic industry, actively pursuing opportunities.

The Company is already in the preliminary stages of evaluating specific opportunities involving blockchain technology. The discussions are only in the preliminary stages but indicate the areas of focus for the Company. These opportunities include potential partnerships, investments or acquisitions involving:

A blockchain software developer building blockchain infrastructure for the financial services industry

A new smart contract platform for building decentralized applications that provides scalability beyond currently available options

Before you get too excited about any of those deals, do note this critical disclaimer:

The Company does not have an agreement with any of these entities for a transaction and there is no assurance that a definitive agreement with these, or any other entity, will be entered into or ultimately consummated.

But hey, that’s fine, right? After all, if this doesn’t work, they’ve always got the tea…

Blockchain is in someways not unlike 3D printing. Bother are unique technologies that undeniably have some very specific application advantages. Those applications are absolutely economically limited in most cases by much more economically competitive and existing applications that accomplish the same task – better and more efficiently. Like 3-D printing, it will be quite some time before the non-critical thinkers get a sense of those economic limitations and stop trying paint everything with a “blockchain” brush. “Blockchain” is the new lipstick color that every “pig” will try on.

Writing about a subject is the best
way to educate yourself about it, and when I flick through past work I remember how much
they taught me, if no one else. Mainly they taught me that I didn’t know very much. But they
also taught me that most other people didn’t know much either. Thus, some key themes
which stand out include the illusory control of policy makers, the presumed knowledge of
those looking to them to actively do good, the ease with which we fool ourselves, and how
best to protect capital in the face of such unavoidable uncertainty. -- Dylan Grice